Fade to Close
by Veronnique
Summary: Just because 2 x 20 really hurt. Oneshot, LoVe. No happy end.


_Just because 2 x 20 really hurt. Emotastic._

_Will __very soon be adding chapter three of Merry Go Round, should anyone care. Also, should probably say that I'm British, so if any spellings appear crazy in some way, it's just the cultural differences kicking in, k?_

* * *

The elevator doors slide shut, and it feels as though, with that neat, sterile click of smooth metal, a world has closed.

That strange, twilight region where a belief in her old life still holding some meaning for other people is permitted, and where Logan Echolls is not just a bastard wrapped around deceptive, glitteringly naive memories, is disappearing.

By the time the metal pulls apart, Veronica is convinced she does not care. That opening of possibilities, temporary and pathetic as it ever was, has withered out; died. It was wrong of her to come, and it was wrong of her to believe something so unequivocally useless as words. Especially - Logan. Fucking jerk. He lies, and he lies, and then to cap it all, he lies about lying. Just a few slurred remarks about epic love, not that he'd know about it since he's flunking English, plagiarism of "Easy Rider" aside, and what, _she_ flutters about like a silly high school girl with a crush?

Disgusting. He's disgustingly predictable and emotionally ugly. Always. How little she expects of him, and much he still manages to disappoint.

The lobby of the Neptune Grand is quiet, serenely sophisticated, and the gentle, rolling musak they are pumping out hits her throat like nausea; makes her eyes sting. It all looks fake, as if someone has built a pretty dolls' house land, in which she, a real, breathing person, is bewildered and trapped forever. The leather upholstery, and the expensively fake flowers that never fade or tarnish. The politely officious staff who smile and glide across the over polished floors. The chandeliers that overhang the lobby. Even the few, meandering guests in their two-piece suits and coiffure. How empty it all is, and yet how it overwhelms her senses and thoughts.

Upstairs, Logan is probably still staring at an empty spot in the elevator shaft. Unless he and Kendall are mindlessly, exuberantly fucking. Disgusting. They deserve each other. Two bone-headed, shallow hedonists who live on nothing except themselves, their sexual pleasures, and their money.

Lucky escape, Veronica manages to tell herself, once she is outside the Neptune Grand and inside her very real, very humanly messed-up, busy little car. Lucky escape from a shitty relationship. Logan would have probably - here, she breaks off, not knowing nor daring to complete that thought. The sequence is better off unfinished sometimes. It's easier; less painful, and Veronica firmly believes in minimizing the amount of pain she has to feel hereon out.

God, though. God, God, God.

At home, her father appears restless, even agitated. Whatever case he is working on is monopolising his time to the point that he hardly notices the teary-eyed state of his daughter. It is categorically not that he is an insensitive father. It is that she, Veronica, is skilled at deceiving him into thinking her life is really not so bad. He is complicit in the deception, too, of course; what parents wants to admit their child is desperately unhappy. She feeds him the belief, drip by drip, that high school is really not so bad - a chore, but not unbearable - and she is really not so vulnerable with her Taser and her wit, and, of course, her relentless sleuthing.

People forget. Parents forget. They look back somewhat wistfully, Veronica thinks, even if they had hated school. It seems a time of lesser evils and minor frustrations, tallied up against the mortgages and dead-end jobs and marriages and divorces and frustrating children.

So, Keith does not notice Veronica's distress, or her anger, and she makes her way, quietly, to her room and bites her lip down until the urge to cry has passed. Instead, she feels the cool stab of justified, powerful anger that became her foundation stone in the days after Lilly died. It is rationalising and dangerous. It is what propels Veronica to act without crumbling, and what propelled her, once upon a time, to make her way to Neptune High and sit alone each lunchtime with her head held furiously, vividly high.

Her phone rings.

Logan's name is on the screen, coupled with a picture that represents an after-effect of their having dated, and Veronica tightly refuses to think that it must cost him anything to dial. She contemplates not picking up, but she is eighteen and too old to stifle unpleasant things in the closet.

After she has picked up, Veronica will not speak. Logan can say his piece first, and then she can dismiss it. The silence preceding her acceptance of the call indicates Logan hasn't realised this, although finally, in a resigned tone of voice, he asks if there's anything he can say to her to make it better.

"No."

"Veronica," says Logan, and he sounds distressed; emotional. "What you said - you didn't even give me a chance to process it. Don't you think maybe I deserve -"

"Let me express this simply," says Veronica. "No. I don't. God, just when I think you can't lower the bar any more, you find some new place -"

"Hey," he says, "I didn't sleep with her, you know. In fact, I don't even remember calling her. She was just there when I woke up. Anyway, I was somewhat wasted. It tends to - " Here, his voice adopted a sardonic tone. "Put a dampener on any sorts of wacky sexual hi-jinks."

"Right," snorts Veronica. "You expect me to take 'I couldn't get it up with Kendall last night' as proof of your innocence and eternal devotion to me. I see it so clearly."

"Clearly, you don't," argued Logan. "I was trying to -"

"Get laid by whatever means possible on prom night? Yes, well, congratulations, Logan. You certainly seemed to have won. I'm just sorry I fell for it. I should have known better."

Veronica put the phone down at that juncture, feeling the conversation to be somewhat at its end.

And afterwards, once she has calmed down and turned her phone off, sat down on her bed and rubbed her face with her hands in the universal gesture of emotional exhaustion, Veronica feels as though the final curtain of the show, epic or otherwise, has closed.

* * *

When you, yes YOU, don't review, a small and insufferably cute bunny rabbit dies a painful death. Blood and dead cuteness will be on your hands if you click off now :P 


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